Fruit and Nut Cake

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Charlie Louie from Hotly Spiced telling me that she’d received a notice from her webhost that her site was hogging the resources of her shared server and she was in trouble. I passed the information on to John because as a geek, I make a good cake.

He looked and looked and the problem wasn’t obvious so he did what methodical people do, he watched the spike in the CPU usage against what was going on in her traffic and the culprit turned out to be her comments feed. It was looping on itself until finally the server shit itself. I believe that’s the technical term or that’s what John called it anyway. It took him nearly 24 hours to isolate the problem.

All during that day I kept getting updates on where Charlie was in case John needed some information or help. She was on the school run and then there was a lunch she was committed to attend and then there was a meeting and then it was school run again and then there was shopping for dinner. I don’t know how she gets everything done because in addition to all of this, she has a top-class blog, a family to organise, a husband to spend time with AND they have a busy social life. She just gets it done.

Today I was sitting at my desk working and my Charlie started to cry. A few seconds later the doorbell rang and it was Charlie the postman with some packages. How do I know his name is Charlie? The first time he rang the doorbell I yelled, “It’s not for you, Charlie, go outside!”

I opened the door to a guy standing there looking like a deer caught in headlights and he said, “How did you know it was me??” So Charlie the postie has become our friend. He gives Charlie a pat and a treat every time he visits. So now, of course, the doorbell is always for the dog!

One of the packages was for John who’s building a camera trolley to do video work. Will it ever happen? Not sure but I’m looking forward to adding a video or two to Orgasmic Chef.

The other package said it was to Maureen and John and inside was this Fruit and Nut Cake!! I’d just seen photos of the Christmas cake the the day before on Hotly Spiced and thought it looked a lot better than my Christmas pudding. Fancy Christmas puddings are not my favourite.

I ripped open the box while John said, “That’s to me too, right?”

“Not until I take pictures,” I replied. The cake is beautiful and shiny and filled with glace fruit and nuts. As soon as I finished the photographs I brought the cake to the coffee table and we each took a piece.

“It’s filled with fruit and big nuts and almost no cake, I love that,” John said.

You should make this cake. Charlie Louie says it’s perfect for Christmas Eve but frankly, it’s pretty good on December 5th or any other day.

You’ll find the recipe on Hotly Spiced for Festive Fruit and Nut Cake. Thank you, Charlie Louie and you shouldn’t have but I’m really glad you did. 🙂

What a nice thing for John to do! And Charlie’s gift is wonderful. Definitely a great way to celebrate the 5th — or any other day in December! A lot of blogs seem to have problems with their comment feeds –frustrating for the blogger and readers both. Anyway, great cake!

Thanks for much for such lovely words, Maureen. I’m so glad the cake made the journey to QLD. The postie promised me it would arrive the day after I posted it and I was glued to the tracking site making sure they did deliver it within 24 hours. You photographed it beautifully. I’m so glad you and John are enjoying it and yes, it was definitely for John too. A very small thank you for the big rescue you gave me! xx

What a great way to share the love guys, how awesome is our bloggy community! If Charlie the postman sees this post about Charlie the bloggers cake, he will want a piece for a treat just like Charlie the dog 🙂 x

No way. I literally just posted on my facebook about how I think I would really like fruitcake – I kept thinking how good it would be to bite into a dense cake filled with lots of dried fruit and nuts – I am not a fan of plain cake and I like my desserts to have texture. I like the sound of this recipe better because I wasn’t sure about the whole “make it in advance and douse with alcohol” part of traditional fruitcake. I pinned the recipe from the hotly spiced site 🙂

So glad you read my mind from across the world and linked to this recipe!

My mom always made fruit cake at Christmas time and gave it as gifts, people raved about it, now you’ve got me wondering about that recipe!
Thank you for introducing Hotly Spiced to me 😉 I followed her on instagram and Facebook…she does seem like the real deal, looking forward to following! xo Sheila

Maureen, you and John are both angels. You save a fellow blogger, then write a post talking about how wonderful she is when in fact you two are the heroes in this story! That fruit cake looks wonderful. I love that it’s so colourful! I could do with a slice of it absolutely right now, it’s afternoon tea time!

Nah, food bloggers are the finest kind of people. We all look after one another. When one has a talent in one area, he or she shares. We make everyone better when it works like that and I’m sure Charlie Louie would agree. She’s done heaps for me.